Thursday, January 17, 2019

I've only been able to write about 2% of what happened to me, and the other 98% may or may not appear when my eyes improve. They are temporarily messed up from the hospital drugs. I am waiting for them to detox and settle down. A fuzzy world looks AWESOME too, so I am VERY blessed. Birds are singing.The sun came up.I feel like the luckiest person alive!THANK YOU for rocking my world.

Wednesday, January 16, 2019

It's 37 effing degrees here so I've decided to move to Florida where it is warmer.

Oh dang it.

I just found out that I am in Florida.

And it's really that cold!

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I am home again recuperating from the ICU. My voice oscialtes between a tiny whisper and other times a full voice that almost works but then after talking for a few minutes it goes back to being hoarse.

I am learning to walk and climb steps and it's all super painful and I've tried to ride my special bicycle cause all I could think of was when I get out of this hospital, I am going to go home and ride my bicycle. I wobble around the neighborhood, but riding my bike is easier than walking. Mostly I use the electric assist to come back home again.

So if you are waiting for me to return your phone call, keep in mind I can only talk about 5 minutes then I need a break.

After getting home from the hospital it took 4 days to get the dread locks out of my long hair and finally a dear sweet angelic soul sat down and finished the final nightmare for me because after 4 days of being unable to completely comb out all the snares and dreadlocks, I was feeling rather ridiculous and looking very unkempt like a wild and crazy person!

Oh yeah, I am wild and crazy... but I love my long hair and take pains to keep it nice... or did...

Apparently in the ICU there was a lot of confusion and I remember the staff threatening me repeatedly to cut off all my long hair which had me screaming but then they knocked me out again so I never knew if I had hair or not.

I had NO head injury and there was no reason for the staff to threaten me repeatedly this way and keep me stressed out.

They refused to let me have my comb so that neither I nor anyone visiting me could comb it during my hospital stay. This is a very curious situation I just don't understand. If I had a head injury and the hospital needed to shave it off to sew up a wound or something, but I wasn't there for a head injury so why the chronic threats to cut off my long hair and keep me stressed out?

It's a mystery!

Stressing out a patient makes healing slow down considerably.

Ever had someone screaming RELAX 2 inches from your ear when you aren't even deaf? Did you feel very relaxed?

Last year when my neighbor was transferred to hospice, a nursing aid shaved off his mustache. I went to see him and asked what the heck happened to his beloved mustache? The staff said they thought he would look better without it and I said well you probably gave him a heart attack when you did that. He loved his mustache and has had it for decades!

When his family found out what they had done without permission from anyone, they were extremely upset too. He died a day later and was buried without his beloved mustache. He wasn't hooked into any equipment that made the mustache be a problem, it was just a bored nursing aid who decided maybe he came for a beauty makeover rather than to die in peace with dignity.

I am LUCKY I am alive! I am lucky that my screaming Noooooooooo in response to the chronic threats might have saved my head of hair.

It's a beautiful day today in spite of the frigid cold. The sun isn't even up yet, but I am up just waiting to see the sunrise to say YAY, I made it to another day and I am the luckiest person on planet earth!

As a bonus, I have hair!

I can even comb it all out on my own now, so I feel very empowered.

All grown up!

To the awesome angel that sat down and helped me fix this hair nightmare I feel so very very lucky. It took hours to get the final snags out.

Maybe everyone else thinks I need super short hair, but I prefer my long hair.

I didn't go to the hospital for a beauty makeover, I ended up there accidentally because I was super sick.

Life is goof...

But I am alive!

And I love my mustache too...

Tee hee hee!

THANK YOU to all the wonderful earthly angels who are aiding in my recovery!

Monday, January 14, 2019

I woke up alive and I am home again so happy to be alive and be out of that hell hole of a hospital I recently visited.

Currently I am learning to walk, learning to climb steps, and learning to eat again. Sounds crazy, but I had a feeding tube shoved down my throat and only recently have I been able to talk above a tiny whisper.

The boring truth is that somewhere between Thanksgiving and Christmas I ran into someone somewhere with pneumonia.

I should have read the writing on the wall. I just knew that I was feeling pretty sluggish day after day. I feared it might be my final days on planet earth so I just woke up with enthusiasm and this year said yes to several fun events in the local RV park when normally I say no and stay home alone. Ironically I had tried to see a new doctor nearby but ran into problems with their unwillingness to address my current concerns.

My immune system is hugely compromised for complicated reasons, mostly from the results of battling a nearly lifelong problem with a rare disease that has no known cure and advanced to a very painful stage 3 some time ago. I am not contagious to others, but I live with a ton of problems and pain which I seek to handle with alternative solutions. A very lonely road in this country where the overuse of prescription drugs seems to be the norm rather than the exception. My rolling hospice changed about 18 months ago to my own little stationary hospice in an RV park in a tiny rural town in Florida. In December, day after day I was losing energy finding it difficult to walk the dog or ride my bike.By the end of December I was in such a poor state that a visiting friend called 911 for an ambulance. I was dumped in a hospital about 60 miles from home.

It turns out I had pneumonia in the worst way. Perhaps I was knocking on heaven's door. But heaven refused to take me and eventually sent me back to planet earth.

Angels came, angels went, there were huge problems in managing my care. The hospital wasn't following my directives but rather did a lot of damaging curious things to my body. I am covered in black and blue bruises from head to tail as if I lost a wrestling match in the worst way possible.

60 miles away friends had stepped in to walk the dog and feed him. I am sure he was bewildered that I suddenly vanished from his life.

He turned 9 years old recently! We celebrated with a few doggy treats and a brand new frisbee type toy he loves. He had spent years wearing out his old one so he was thrilled to get a new replacement.

I gave up drinking ages ago in favor of daily water, typically I drink 2-4 quarts a day to keep my liver and kidneys puttering along. I arrived at the hospital in huge distress but clearly quite sober. Anyhow, after about two weeks in ICU, the hospital couldn't kill me, so they finally gave up trying and sent me home.

It would have been nice to learn about eating, walking and climbing steps first, but medical care in America has changed dramatically. More on that later...So here I am ALIVE! It's a beautiful day and I blessed in so many ways to be here.

I came home with alternative treatments and more medical equipment. I don't think I can do another hell hole stay in an indifferent hospital. I have tons of paperwork to change and do, yuck yuck yuck. Crazy stuff!

Careening Around In A 1994 Mini Motorhome, Recuperating, Rambling, Writing

About...

Dear
Miss Mermaid has been blogging
since 1994... before blogging was even a word.
As the most
popular correspondent in the Caribbean, she posted from
sailboats and tiny islands for over 15 of her 23 years in the
Caribbean. After a life changing
calamity, she
relocated in 2009 to a little old motorhome in
the USA to recuperate, wander, and write.

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